RoNPocalypse

The RoNPocalypse was an event from December 2012 until around March 2013 that almost resulted in the complete discontinuation of Rise of Nations Multiplayer. The RoNPocalypse was triggered by the withdrawal of support from GameSpy and its owners, Glu Mobile. AS, as well as other clans, swiftly took action to resolve this crisis, which led to the eventual Vugi Patch that resulted in a patch independent of GameSpy Support.

Background
Big Huge Games, the developer of Rise of Nations, was acquired by 38 Studios in 2009 when they were faced with harsh economic conditions. In 2012, 38 Studios announced that they had laid off the entirety of the BHG Staff. However, they were brought back by Epic Games, but renamed to Impossible games and closed in February 2013. GameSpy, the technology company that provided middleware support for Rise of Nations, was bought by Glu Mobile in 2012, after facing financial instability. Glu Mobile announced in the summer of 2012 that they would be cutting middleware programs to cut down on expenses. This would come to fruition into many other GameSpy games, such as Star Wars Battlefront Multiplayer.

Support Cut from Multiplayer, Immediate Solutions, and Tunngle
In December 2012, in an unexpected turn for the worst, the multiplayer access for Rise of Nations ceased to show any games in the lobby. At first, this was seen by many as just another glitch in the "GaySpy" programs, as bugs have been present such as this before. However, after other reports of other games, controlled by Glu Mobile, and articles reporting of such middleware closures, panic ensued throughout the Rise of Nations community on an unprecedented scale.

The game's best programmer, Vugi, who had extensive knowledge of the databases of Rise of Nations, was on vacation at the time of the middleware closure. In his absence, many were not aware if there were any possibilities of saving Rise of Nations from destruction. With this, there were many immediate solutions to keep the Multiplayer community alive. Many people went to either GameRanger, or played LAN Games with their friends. Others simply played Rated Games (1v1s) to keep playing on the GameSpy platform. However, although these solutions were readily available, these solutions came to face many problems and many changes that destroyed the morale of the multiplayer community altogether. However, AS decided to take the initiative in making a more stable, yet temporary, solution until Vugi arrived to help with the situation. Although some infighting between them happened in the beginning of the crisis, AS Pimp-Masterflex and [AS]_Zappa took the lead into finding such a stable solution. They happened to come across a gaming platform called Tunngle. Pimp and Zappa tested out a game on this new platform, and found that this was a rousing success, and could be used for the rest of the Multiplayer Community. Because of this, AS went on a massive advertising campaign to get people centered on Tunngle to try to restabilize the multiplayer community for the time being. This was led by Pimp, Zappa, [AS]_AZTX, [AS]_Falas6eny, and [AS]_Raptor341WaR, though this was more of a group effort with all participating their fair share. This proved to be a great success for a temporary solution, as the Tunngle Lobby had, at times, more people in it that in the normal GameSpy lobby before the RoNPocalypse.

Vugi's First Patches, Recovery and Stagnation
When Vugi came back from his vacation, he immediately began work on a patch that would be independent of GameSpy middleware. After a while, he was able to implement an initial patch, which worked to moderate success, though it contained bugs that still disallowed gameplay. After these bugs were fixed in a new patch, there was moderate gameplay available in the GameSpy lobby, though the Master Server was usually down every so often, even with DownTimes greater than 50%. However, many Rise of Nations players took advantage of this patch to keep the community alive, including many AS members. During this time, AS became the most active clan in the GameSpy lobby due to its commitment to the recovery of the multiplayer community.

However, many events triggered a stagnation that would last for a couple months. Pimp, who was very active during the initial RoNPocalypse, left for an extended period of absense due to his college work, which left him unable to keep his activity on RoN. Many AS members also became very per-occupied, or even began to lose hope in the Recovery Process. However, Pimp was still moderately active to keep life in the clan, helped by members such as Falas and AZTX.

Also, Vugi's patches, though moderately successful, began to decline in terms of fixing the problems of the previous patches and allowing for greater degrees of freedom in gameplay. Many people started to regard Vugi's patches as a failure, and began to reconvene to the temporary solutions as opposed to Vugi's work.

Final Patch and the "Rebuilding"
In March 2013, Vugi released a patch that allowed for a running time of over 99%, which is regarded as the Vugi Patch. This patch was the most successful of the patches, and is the patch that is currently used today in RoN Multiplayer. It allowed for a permanent solution to the RonPocalypse, and began to restore hope in the multiplayer community.

However, the main problem was that the patch had taken very long to build, and some people lost hope and left RoN, or became to accustomed to the temporary solutions and still had negative feelings towards Vugi's patches. However, Pimp, a great supporter of Vugi's patches, decided to help spread the word, along with the rest of AS, to restore the GameSpy Lobby to its pre-RonPocalypse state. This is known as the Rebuilding, and was the period where the RoN Lobby began to recover to its normal state in terms of activity and gameplay.